Gandhi Before Gandhi

Author(s): Bipin Doshi, Priti Shah
Publisher: Jain Academy Educational Research Center Promotion Trust Mumbai

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GANDHI BEFORE GANDHI
and the subject of a hundred legends, Vikram the Great. He is to the Hindu what Charlemagne is to the French, what Alfred is to the English, and what Harun-Al-Rashid is to the Mohammedan. To the learned as to the illiterate, to the poet as to the story teller, to the old man as to the school-boy, his name is as familiar in India as the name of any prince or potentate or mighty leader in any country. Tender recollections of Shakuntala and Urvashi rise in the minds of Hindu scholars
with the name of that prince in whose court Kalidasa flourished. Hindu astronomers cherish the memory of that great patron of Varaha-Mihira, and Hindu lexicographers honor the name of the potentate who honoured Amara-Siuha, and as if the true claims of glory were not enough, a hundred tales familiarize his name to the illiterate and simple. In this sense history does repeat itself and teaches that after all, nations are preserved, regenerated and liberated to higher planes of realization, achievement and prosperity in material and spiritual things, by human embodiments of those divine forces which are universal, and which, when rightly understood, are answers for human destinies. You Americans are living in the realization of the ancient dreams of the philosophers of India and the East. The means of the growth and human uplifting are great here. Our prophets and philosophers have laid the foundations and it is now for you to build on those foundations. This is the message of India, which she delivers to you and through you to the whole American nation. With this message, also come more than simple greeting
and recognition. The young American nation is in a condition to rightly appreciate the treasures of the ancient lore and sublime philosophy of India and the Orient, because, intellectually considered, this is virgin soil, and with the message which I bring to America comes also the fraternal invitation to you to study and understand this philosophy. The key to the archives of our ancient history and lore is placed in confidence in your lap. You are invited to unlock for yourselves, with our permission and co-operation, this vast storehouse which contains the treasures of our ancient philosophy and achievements. Why? because you are young; because you are studious, unbiased, free and these are the conditions which answer for your receptivity.
Certain of your missionaries have informed you wrongly of our history and conditions, of our moral stature and of our religions
Certain of your missionaries have informed you wrongly of our history and condition, of our moral stature and of our religion. It is because they have studied us from the outside and with eyes blinded by prejudice, it is
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